I Am Seattle Center-Bonnie Hedman

BONNIE HEDMAN. Known as the “Gardening Grandma,” Bonnie has a plot in the Uptown P-Patch, located on the roof of Mercer Street Parking Garage. She is active in the gardening community there, and she works with Center School students teaching them botanical skills.

“My dad was in the military and we moved about every nine months. And one thing my dad always did is wherever we lived he planted rose bushes. And so we always planted. Then as I grew up and became an adult, even though a lot of the places I lived in were rentals, I always did a lot of gardening because I enjoyed it, but also it made a stamp of beauty wherever I was. The P-Patch is mostly focused on vegetables, but you can’t have vegetables without flowers because flowers attract the pollinators. If you don’t have pollinators, you don’t get much produce. Like for squash– that squash flower has to be pollinated by a pollinator seven times before you get a squash.”